Sierra’s Hoyle Vol. 1 was one of my first computer games.

The other day I was rem­i­nisc­ing about my first com­puter , and I got to think­ing about all the old soft­ware and games I used to have for it.

One of the ear­li­est com­puter games I can remem­ber play­ing (note: not ear­li­est con­sole games—that’s a post about Atari that I’ll save for another day) is the old Sierra clas­sic,  Hoyle’s Offi­cial Book of Games: Vol­ume 1 .

Released in 1989, it was Sierra’s first card game game (sounds weird to use the same word twice in a row) and included Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Hearts, Gin Rummy, Crib­bage and Klondike. What I loved most about it was its peanut gallery of playable oppo­nents that rep­re­sented char­ac­ters from other Sierra games (like Leisure Suit Larry), and even some mem­bers of the Sierra devel­op­ment team. I, of course, always chose the dog. And the sparkly rain­bow deck. You know, because I was a seven year old girl.

My mem­o­ries of this game go hand-in-hand with the demo video for the Cre­ative Sound Blaster Pro sound card. I guess it was intended to show off the Sound Blaster’s audio capa­bil­i­ties, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just watched it to see pretty col­ors danc­ing around on my huge, beige CRT mon­i­tor. It was mindblowing.

What was your first com­puter game?

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